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Have you seen TiVo's new marketing campaign? The slogan is: "My TiVo Gets Me." According to the company, apparently, we connect with TiVo on a remarkably personal level. This personal video recorder is here to be our friend, family, confidant, and guide.

I'm not kidding.

I recently received a press kit from TiVo, and in it the PR flack notes that "Mothers have written to TiVo touting its benefits as a tool to help them breast-feed and potty-train." Now that is one amazing consumer electronics gadget. Honestly, I have trouble imagining how TiVo accomplished either task, but I'm sure the videos are astonishing and available somewhere on YouTube.

TiVo celebrated its eighth year on the market on March 31, and if the company is to be believed, it is now in 4.4 million homes. The company also claims that TiVo has bonded with consumers' consciousness in a way unlike any product that's come before itit counts some 12,300 "TiVo" references on TV last year.

I'm not going to dispute any of this. Up until recently, TiVo was an indispensable part of my life. Even after I switched to HD and learned that my TiVo series II would not be joining the HD party, I still refused to give it up. I fiddled with my myriad cables until I was able to get standard-def TV through my FiOS TV connection and into the TiVo.

Obviously, this wasn't just about slavish devotion to the brand (though I do love the little TiVo character). I had countless shows and recordings of my TV appearances saved on my TiVo, and I had season passes set up for shows that weren't in HD. Even with two tuners in my HD DVR, I'm still such a TV junkie that I sometimes needed a third recording device.

The simple truth is that I just plain like TiVo. I'm fond of the interface, even if it is a bit modal and tends to rabbit-hole you down to some features, so you have to climb all the way back to the surface to access a different one. I like the media-management capabilities, such as the ability to access photos from my networked PC in the basement even when my home PC couldn't. My HD DVR does not come with these native abilities (and it looks like Verizon might want me to pay extra for that).

I never anthropomorphized my TiVo in the way the company is touting that some people apparently have, and it has done nothing to help me teach my children or myself anything. It was, however, the first digital device to give me supreme, "godlike" control over what I used to struggle to manage. (VCRs never offered a comparable level of control and flexibility.)

For a time, I kept my TiVo and new HD DVR running side by side. This gave me ample opportunity to compare their interfaces. The Motorola HD DVR, in some ways, did more than my TiVo. I could speed through video faster, but I soon learned that going to "F4," for fast-forward in fourth gear, was way too fast for me. I sometimes ended up at the end of an hour-long show in the time it took for me to say "oops." F1 was too slow, so I now stick with F2 or, if I can pay really close attention, F3. TiVo's different. Pitched beeps for each level of fast-forwarding may seem goofy, but they helped me keep track of how fast I was going. And, TiVo was smart enough to let me record, pause, and then watch a show all the way through. The Motorola DVR, on the other hand, will, if I start watching a show, hit Record, and then decide to pause it and resume viewing 15 minutes later, actually stop the paused show at the time the live show would have normally ended. This means I have to then find the recorded show, start from the beginning, and fast-forward to where the show got cut off. Not good.

About the Author

A 25-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance Ulanoff is the former Editor in Chief of PCMag.com.
Lance Ulanoff has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases, "on line" meant "waiting" and CPU speeds were measured in single-digit megahertz. He's traveled the globe to report on a vast array of consumer and business... See Full Bio

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